The Mysterious Case of the Startup CEO

What the **** is our CEO doing???

In the past 6 years of being an entrepreneur, I’ve had many small, private conversations with Startup CEOs, and I noticed a pretty interesting but common trend.  I initially thought this was more of a unique experience of my own and very few people had the same issue, but I started to see the same thing among technical and non-technical CEOs alike. I then realize it’s something that may be worth sharing about.

Often times, when I ask these startup CEOs about their roles in the company, they would sheepishly say, “Yea…so I’m the ‘CEO’ of the company….whatever that really means…” I’ve been in that mentality myself. It’s hard to explain what you do as a startup CEO, as everything seems pretty vague and does not sound like it tangibly makes the business more value. The only clear task that people actually credit their CEOs is “fundraising”.

But these CEOs unanimously say they work crazy hours. So what are they doing anyway with these hours? It’s somewhat of a mystery.

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